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Park News - (3/22/12) TPR has posted some pictures of Thunderbolt being taken down at Celebration City. If you missed the previous announcement, Thunderbolt is being sent to Colorado to become Cliffhanger at Glenwood Caverns Adventure Park.
    (3/19/12) Silver Dollar City has posted a fun behind the scenes video showing off how the park gets ready to open for the 2012 season. It has some great behind the scenes footage of Powder Keg, and the hardware that makes the air-launch work. They also show off their own ball-shaped track inspection cart used on the B&M made Wildfire coaster. They’ve got the best name for this I’ve heard yet… they call it the Tie-Fighter. Check it out below.

    (12/30/11) Pictures from the ACE Coaster Christmas event that took place at Silver Dollar City can be found over at MidWestInfoGuide.
    (12/29/11) Negative-G has posted a trip report from Silver Dollar City and their Old Time Christmas event.
    (12/22/11) A great trip report from Silver Dollar City’s Old Time Christmas has been posted to Theme Park Review this week.
    (8/31/11) While the 2011 Summer Season is at an end, I did just hear an odd little tidbit about Silver Dollar City’s Thunderation coaster. Up through the 2010 season, the coaster’s 3rd and 5th mine train cars used to run backwards. For the 2011 season however, all cars have been returned to running forward only. I got to wonder if lawyers and insurance is to blame, much like how all the old backwards running wooden racer coasters at the Paramount Parks were turned around to run forward again once purchased by Cedar Fair. Anyone have any inside knowledge about why this was changed?

2012 - The Pinkerton Man - (12/19/11) BlooLoop reports that a new western / action stunt show called The Pinkerton Man will open at Silver Dollar City in 2012 under the creative hand of Mirage Entertainment. While they only had one piece of concept art to look at, it did remind me visually of the old Wild Wild Wild West Stunt Show that used to be at Universal Studios, which can only be a good thing.

2013 - The Outlaw - Under Construction - (5/14/12) A reader has been quick to point out that despite Silver Dollar City’s new trademark application to use the name The Outlaw for their 2013 wooden coaster, Adventureland in Iowa has been using the name “Outlaw” for their CCI wooden coaster since 1993. Somehow I don’t think Adventureland filed a trademark on the name themselves, but it may give Silver Dollar City a reason to think twice about using the name themselves.
    (5/13/12) Our friends at MidWestInfoGuide have dug up a new trademark for Silver Dollar City for the name of the park’s 2013 coaster… The Outlaw. Gotta love it.
    (4/30/12) Another construction update of the Rocky Mountain Coaster going up at Silver Dollar City has been posted to Theme Park Review this weekend. The shocking thing is that they have started to already installing the “topper track” pieces on the hill already.
    (4/25/12) The latest buzz on the new Rocky Mountain coaster project at SDC claims that the layout will be mostly an out & back style ride, with some twister sections mixed in with some heavy overbanked turns. This may also be the first coaster to use Rocky Mountain’s own custom trains when it opens.
    (4/24/12) New pictures of the 2013 coaster at Silver Dollar City posted to MidWestInfoGuide shows that the structure we saw before has gotten bigger and is clearly the lift hill for the new coaster.
    (4/20/12) Talk about starting in early… vertical construction on the new “rumored” wooden coaster at Silver Dollar City has already begun. The park is said to be remaining in denial about the very visible project so far, and is rumored to not even make any kind of official announcement about the project until this Fall. Someone apparently did confirm that Rocky Mountain Coaster Company is the one behind this, as expected.
    (3/29/12) A new report from Silver Dollar City has been posted to Theme Park Review this week, where they also take a good look at the ground clearing and early concrete work taking place for the 2013 project. A ton of pre-fabricated footers for the Rocky Mountain wooden coaster project are scattered and buried all over the site.
    (3/20/12) MidWestInfoGuide takes a peek around Silver Dollar City to see just how much site-work has already been done to prepare for the park’s 2013 project, rumored to be a new wooen coaster from Rocky Mountain Coasters.
    (1/23/12) One of our readers who resides in the Spokane, WA area pointed out an interesting article in the local paper about the Rocky Mountain Construction Group. The article talked about how the group is building a new $1 million shop building in Hayden, Idaho where they will move their track manufacturing operations. This will also free up room for the group to begin building their very own roller coaster cars.
    Why? Much like why GCI created the Millennium Flyers that could maneuver through their extremely twisted layouts, Rocky Mountain’s track system is simply capable of doing things other trains wouldn’t be able to do. According to Rocky Mountain, “We will be building cars we think will be revolutionary for the industry.” They go on to state that the combination of their new track and cars will be able to allow a wooden coasters to perform inversions, a feat no one has tried since Son of Beast at Kings Island.
    Best of all the article also mentioned that the group has roller coaster projects planned for Silver Dollar City and Six Flags Fiesta Texas, both to open in Spring 2013. This matches up well with the reports from IAAPA where Rocky Mountain was reported as having two 2013 projects in the works. One of those was said to be a custom built wooden coaster project that would feature Rocky Mountain’s Topper Track. Could this be what Silver Dollar City has in store for 2013?
    Speaking of the 2013 project, the SDCFans forum reports that ground clearing work for the park’s 2013 project seems to have started as soon as the park closed for the winter. They are working in the area just beyond the Giant Swing where the old train robbers shack was removed at the end of the 2011 season. And the biggest question is… if the park is getting a new Rocky Mountain coaster, will it have an inversion?
    (12/29/11) At the ACE Coaster Christmas event (as detailed at the Unofficial Worlds of Fun site) the GM of Silver Dollar City (Brad Thomas) spoke to the crowd and dropped an interesting hint about a possible future attraction. He told the group that they should have some very exciting news to talk about at next year’s Coaster Christmas event, which I’d take to mean that there are plans afoot for a nice new coaster (or major thrill ride) to be added to the park for the 2013 season.

???? - Future Attraction Concepts - (8/10/11) I think I missed this news earlier this season, but in May Silver Dollar City put out a survey to get feedback on a few interesting new attractions, which have been captured at SDCFans. The concept pitched were:
    Stagecoaster, a Zamperla Motocoaster with a horse theme that would have been very similar to Pony Express at Knott’s.
    Moon Shot, what appears to be an S&S Space Shot tower with a themed ride cart that appears to launch you up with the power of steam, with pipes and venting steam to be found all over the place. While SDCFans speculates this could be the S&S Doubleshot Tower from Celebration City, I do have to wonder if they may have pitched the idea of upgrading the Doubleshot Tower into a full Space Shot tower. I believe both rides use most of the same hardware, so a conversion may not be so difficult.
    The Bull, the last concept was a large wooden coaster, that would have likely been similar in size and scope to Thunderhead at Dollywood, which fits up with rumors that SDC has been thinking about adding just such a coaster for a number of years now.
    While we have no way of knowing which idea they may go with, if any... the one message is clear however, that they are focused on planning a major thrill ride for SDC in the near future.